Supervision Strategy for Substance Use Disorder Treatment Programs: A Pilot Study
University of Arkansas
Summary
Substance use disorders such as opioid addiction affect millions of adults in the United States each year, but the delivery of high-quality, effective addiction services is disrupted by organizational issues such as counselor burnout and turnover. Clinical supervisors are essential for supporting counselors in specialty addiction treatment programs, but few supervisors receive supervision-focused training. This project seeks to develop and pilot an evidence-based supervision strategy that has a high potential to enhance supervision and result in improved counselors' well-being and performance and, in turn, to improve client outcomes.
Description
Substance use disorders (SUDs) such as addiction to opioids, methamphetamines and alcohol are a significant burden in the US, affecting almost 50 million individuals annually. Community specialty SUD treatment programs ("SUD programs") are a key type of SUD providers and while effective treatments for SUD exist, significant issues in the organization and delivery of SUD programs (e.g., burnout, turnover) undermine the delivery of high-quality services. Clinical supervisors are centrally positioned to support SUD counselors (frontline clinical providers) and ensure high service quality. For cli…
Eligibility
- Age range
- 18+ years
- Sex
- All
- Healthy volunteers
- Yes
Inclusion Criteria: * Serves as a supervisor (i.e., oversee work of counselors) or counselor (i.e., directly work with clients) at a substance use treatment facility/program * Program/facility provides residential services Exclusion Criteria: * Supervisors contracted (not employed) by the facility
Interventions
- OtherFOCUS supervision strategy
The FOCUS supervision strategy provides a strenghts-based model for supervision. It is built around three core components: (1) Five pillars for effective supervision interactions, (2) practical skills that operationalize these principles, and (3) a set of experiential activities that provide foundational learnings for staff to practice the skills around real-life situations (from which future client-specific interventions can be built). In this study, FOCUS is being tailored for SUD treatment settings.
Location
- University of Arkansas for Medical SciencesLittle Rock, Arkansas